Sandy - Thank you for the title and author... look forward to reading the ' Gay-Neck'.. right now I am finishing my second book..so not too much time on my hands. I have a deadline to meet. There is a cat organization that wants to use the book to educate and generate funds to help Sr Citizen with their vet bill..... : )

"Gay-Neck" (the 1928 winner, our Jan. book) is by Dhan Gopal Mukerji. In the U.K., it's apparently titled "Chitra: The Story of a Pigeon".

I can tell you that very few 8-14 y.o. boys will ever check a book entitled "Gay-Neck" out of the school library. My 12 y.o. son was beside himself with giggles when he even saw the book when I was reading it.

On the other hand, I haven't been successful in getting him to read any of the Newbery winners before the 1940's.

I agree that the first 1/3 was the hardest part in reading Smoky. It was hard to pick it up again after I put it down (for months!) when I got bored. But I read the last 2/3 in a couple of days.

Finally finished Smoky! I actually liked it a little better than I was expecting. I love animals, but I've never been much of a horse person - love them from afar, but they really make me quite nervous up close! Ha!

I thought the first 1/3 of Smoky dragged quite a bit - when we're sort of inside his head as a young horse. It picked up a bit when Smoky meets Clint. And the I found myself really involved in the last 1/3. I wanted so badly to know how it all goes for poor Smoky!! I really liked *what* the story had to say - about friendship and patience and kindness towards animals. I didn't always like *how* it was said though. The dialect was HORRIBLE! I got so tired of it! I feel like a broken record with that! Ha! I was definitely turned off my the racist portrayal/descriptions of the mixed race character :( and that would be one of the main reasons I wouldn't be able to recommend this to children of today. BUT, I think some older, more mature children who are horse lovers *might* enjoy this. But that sure seems like a lot of restrictions!

Sandy - the roaring '20...an amazing time period. 'Gay-Neck' by whom?

OK, I love horses and devoured horse stories (like all of Marguerite Henry) as a child, and I *still* had a hard time getting through it.

"Eddication" and "crethure" were my two least favorite words in there.

Reading about Will James was a LOT more interesting than reading Smoky (there are a bunch of links on The Newbery Project, if you're looking for distraction).

On the plus side, I really was surprised by how much I liked Gay-Neck, so don't be too down on the 1920's. :-)

Will look this book up...Smoky the cow horse.

I'm about half way through now and my impression is that it's really not a bad book, but there are two things keeping it from being *good*. First, the dialect. It just gets old and it's actually distracting (making it hard to understand what's going on at times) and in general it doesn't add anything. I do like a well done dialect (Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn) But why on earth would a horse have a dialect?? Also, it's just toooooo long. In some ways it's a neat and convincing look into a horse's mind, but it just goes on too long. At this point my thought is that I would only recommend this for kids who are die hard horse lovers. I feel like if the dialect had been dropped and the story had been shortened considerably this could be a potential classic.

I may be the only one reading this, but I'll go ahead and discuss just in case. So far this is striking me as an attempt at an American version of Black Beauty. In that way I'm not super impressed with this book. It doesn't strike me as a very original thing to do. Also, it seems dreadfully long already. I'm only about 20 pages in and I can't imagine how he's going to stretch this type of thing out to 300 pages! And the dialect - eeek, I'm not loving it. I don't see how it adds to a story to have a horse thinking in a quasi-southern dialect...strange. It's not totally horrible though. I have to give kudos to a book that makes an earnest attempt to portray an animal's point of view and to do it in a fairly believable way (minus the dialect!)

No worries Abigail. Just catch up and chime in whenever you can! It's supposed to be fun!

Ha! A late fee, on top of not enjoying it! And yours truly falls further behind... ARGH!

Just getting this up for this month. I'm going to get my copy from the library today. Sadly I have to pay a stinking late for for Shen of the Sea....bummer!